Santiago-based ATER are taking their extreme metal into more melodic and emotionally driven territory on Everlasting, scheduled for release on January 29, 2027, through Torque Records. The eight-song album incorporates goth and doom elements while retaining the band's extreme roots.
The development follows a busy period for the Chilean act: ATER performed 110 shows in 2025, including support for CRADLE OF FILTH in Santiago and an appearance at Turock Festival in Essen, Germany. Their next album turns toward gothic romanticism, with changes in composition and frontman Fernando Bühring's approach to singing.
Presented as an anthology rather than specifically a concept album, Everlasting links individual chapters through a dark love story. Passion and adoration give way to manipulation, heartbreak, submission and abandonment.
“The songs were pouring out of me,” Bühring says. “Once I had all the music written, the lyrics and themes started coming to me, as well as the title. It was all very natural, I just followed the feelings the music gave back to me and as always I poured a lot of my personal life and tribulations in there.” The writing also challenged him to develop his singing voice for the band's evolving sound.
The opening song, “Venus,” previously released as a single in 2025, introduces the lovers through an ode to the goddess. The announcement describes its heavy, sensual approach as an expression of a sacrificial union that is both beautiful and destructive. “When At Night” follows with a supernatural courtship: a creature pursues a woman whose attraction outweighs her fear, culminating in a union that provokes the gods' envy. Intense rhythms and guttural vocals contrast with clean singing and harmonies.
“Heart Of Glass” slows the music into a somber account of blind worship and emotional destruction, leaving its protagonist hoping death will end his pain. The dissonant romantic ballad “Neverlasting” addresses separation and grief. The announcement calls its name “a twist to the album’s name, kind of a title track but using a synonym instead,” connecting its longing and fading hope to the wider narrative.
Control and submission shape “Make Me Bleed,” whose broken protagonist remains devoted to a deceitful, possessive lover. “Ketamine” pushes that dependence into spiraling depression, carried by aggressive rhythms and forceful percussion.
The second heavy romantic ballad, “Sleep,” moves from a slower, weighty passage into clean guitars and vocals with a dreamlike atmosphere. Its subject is rejection, insomnia and intrusive dreams sustained by obsessive longing. The press announcement specifies that “Sleep” is currently the only track cleared for radio and podcast play.
Closing track “With You Came The Winter” uses winter as an emotional landscape of abandonment and desolation. Its protagonist is left suspended in paralysis, likened in the announcement to being frozen inside an iced lake, as the album's sonic elements converge in a bleak, theatrical conclusion.
Bühring produced Everlasting, which was recorded at Torque Records. Daniel Lancaster handled mixing, Tony Lindgren of Fascination Street Studios mastered the album, and Travis Smith created the cover artwork.
ATER describe their music as Dark Metal or Extreme Dark Metal, drawing primarily from extreme metal and gothic rock. Their stated approach pairs modern and organic production with guitar- and bass-led writing, often placing bass prominently in the mix, and an introspective treatment of contemporary gothic romanticism.
The band's debut, Eternal Gray Spiral, appeared in 2018 through Insania Recordings. Their second album, Somber, followed in 2024 through Torque Records; the singles “The Fall” and “Venus” arrived in 2025.
Their European touring history includes Epic Prophecy Europe 2024 with BATUSHKA, VLTIMAS and GOD DETHRONED; Beyond The Black Tour Europe 2025 with VENOM INC, KRISIUN and HATE; and Morbidfest Tour Europe 2025 with POSSESSED, TERRORIZER, SUICIDAL ANGELS and NIGHTFALL. ATER's supplied lineup comprises Fernando Bühring, Vincent Zbinden, Christian Vallejos and Javier Ciudad.
- Venus
- When At Night
- Heart Of Glass
- Neverlasting
- Make Me Bleed
- Ketamine
- Sleep
- With You Came The Winter
